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Elon Musk Blasts California For ‘Overtaxation’; Says He Sold ‘Enough Stock’

Elon Musk Blasts California For ‘Overtaxation’; Says He Sold ‘Enough Stock’

Tesla’s CEO; Elon Musk recently revealed that he had sold “enough stock” to reach his plan to sell 10 percent of his shares in the world’s most valuable car company, according to an interview released on Dec 21.

The billionaire, who moved the company’s headquarters from California to Texas this month after his move last year, also slammed California for “over-taxation”.

Tesla shares, which had hovered near record-highs, lost about a quarter of their value after Musk said on Nov 6 he would sell 10 percent of his stake if Twitter users agreed. On Tuesday, Musk sold another 583,611 shares, bringing the total number of shares he has offloaded to 13.5 million – about 80 percent of what he had planned to sell.

“I sold enough stock to get to around 10 percent plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,” he said in the interview with satirical website Babylon Bee.

When asked whether he sold the stock because of the Twitter poll, he said he needed to exercise stock options that are expiring next year “no matter what”. He also added that he sold an additional “incremental stock” to get near 10 percent.

Out of the 13.5 million shares sold, 8.06 million were sold to pay taxes related to his options exercise.

The electric-car maker, took to Twitter on Sunday to announce that he would pay more than US$11 billion in taxes this year.

“California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, over-taxation,” he said, adding that it is “increasingly difficult to get things done” in California.

This comes after Democratic US Senator; Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop “freeloading off everyone else” after Time magazine named him its “person of the year”.

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